Quitting is fundamentally different from stopping. The latter happens all the time. Quitting happens once. Quitting means not starting again—and art is all about starting again.

— David Bayles & Ted Orland, Art and Fear

I love this quote from Art & Fear because it perfectly sums up my experience, so far, with hiking the Appalachian Trail.

I stopped again. But I have not quit.

I’ve been dreading coming back to the blog because coming back would mean sharing that I stopped. I stopped fifteen miles short of Katahdin and with 70 miles left to finish in the Smokies. I was sure I had it this year. Sure I would finish and be able to move on to the next thing—the Long Trail or the Tahoe Rim Trail or the Mountains to Sea Trail.

But I didn’t finish.

And I spent the month of September healing from another injury and grappling with the shame of not finishing what I’d set out to do.

Until this quote from Art and Fear leapt from the page and into my heart and reframed the whole experience of shame I had around quitting.

I’ve come to understand is that there is nothing to be ashamed of.

Because I’m not a quitter. I’m someone who chose to stop.

And I will choose to start again.

After hiking from Springer Mountain to Fontana Dam in June, I headed north to Rangeley, Maine and got back on the trail on July 30 and picked up where I got off last year because of a knee thing.

This year I hiked 205 miles to Abol Bridge, where I cried “Uncle,” called my husband and went straight to Walmart to buy a cane.

Forget Texas, don’t you dare mess with Maine.

I think I’ve officially had all the injuries that a long distance hiker can possibly get. IT Band Syndrome. Sinus Tarsi Syndrome. Labrum Impingement. This time it was a little more serious. I had a stress fracture in my pelvis, probably from that one slip and fall (out of several) where I landed on my ass in the splits.

I’m kind of impressed that I kept hiking as long as I did.

So, the task remains incomplete and I continue to refine my understanding of what it means to “hike your own hike.” I meant to hike more slowly. To take zeros in every town. To do fewer miles.

But I got caught up in thru-hiker-think and in proving myself that I forgot there’s nothing to prove. I forgot the joy is in the journey, not reaching the end. I forgot that the last one there wins.

The silver lining, as always, is that I get to go back next year to a place that keeps calling me back. I get another chance to start again.

Meanwhile, here are some things I’ll remember about Maine.

Nothing like a little climb up some rebar to ease back onto the trail.

Or a scramble down some rock chutes.

We spent a good hour gorging on free food along the trail. Maine + August = Wild Blueberries!

No shortage of river fording, which can lead to some funky stuff going on with your feet after a while.

There was never any shortage of mud puddles to splash through and to remind me what it was like to be five years old again.

More scrambling. No wonder people get hurt. This shit is hard!

But the rewards, in the form of exquisite waterfront campsites, are worth the extra effort. (Do you see U Turn’s legs down by the water?)

My motto for Maine: No pond left unswum (except the ones with six inch long leeches).

Keep walking, though there’s no place to get to. Don’t try to see through the distances. That’s not for human beings. Move within, but don’t move the way fear makes you move.Today, like every other day, we wake up empty and frightened. Don’t open the door to the study and begin reading. Take down a musical instrument.Let the beauty we love be what we do.There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.

Keep Walking, by Jalal-al-Din Rumi

I remember when I was on the trail an impromptu poetry reading in the shelter in the town of Glasgow, Virginia. Cookie Monster shared Roll the Dice by Charles Bukowski.

Something I turn to because sitting on a zafu watching my breath doesn't work for me. My body fidgets and my mind goes berserk with imaginary debates where I always have the last word. Unlike in real life.

Sitting meditation is just another meal for my ego, which is fat enough and doesn't need any more feedings.

But hiking long distances with intention is an exercise in humility, forgiveness and trust...all strangers to the ego's M.O.

The ego doesn't understand what happens on a long hike.

It doesn't get...

Living simply and carrying all your worldly goods on your back (because it has been conditioned to think more is always better);

Stepping into the unknown (because it doesn't like surprises);

Accepting that you don't have all the answers and may need to ask for help sometimes (because it's a righteous know-it-all);

Welcoming hardships in the form of physical pain, dangerous weather and bears (because it likes to be comfortable. And safe).

Allowing and opening (because it's dedicated to forcing and pushing)

A Grand Canyon's worth of space for Spirit to flow

A long distance hike shakes us out of the habit of sleepwalking through life.

A long distance hike silences the ego through the novelty of the experience and allows the quiet voice of our own wisest self to speak and be heard.

A long distance hike cracks us open, a little more each day we're on the trail and away from our usual triggers, until there is a Grand Canyon's worth of space for spirit to flow through us.

A space too wide for the ego to cross easily.

Any long distance hike will open that space for spirit if that's what you crave.

Intentional Hiking, I've found, gets me there faster. For the rest of this week, I'll be sharing more practices you can bring with you on your hikes. More tools for excavating your own personal Grand Canyon where spirit flows.

Walking takes longer than any other form of locomotion except crawling. Thus it stretches time and prolongs life. Walking makes the world much bigger, and therefore more interesting. You have time to observe the details.

— Edward Abbey, The Journey Home

Two years ago I was called to attend the Trail Dames Summit at Western North Carolina University in Cullowhee, NC.

It's a bi-annual conference for women who hike and it's full of hikers of all skills there to learn more, share and empower each other.

I'm not sure why I felt called to go. I could have just gone hiking, instead. By myself.

Without the stress of being an introvert in a sea of unfamiliar faces.

Thankfully, I chose to embrace the discomfort and answer the call.

Looking back, it's not being melodramatic to say that the Trail Dames Summit of 2016 changed my life in several ways.

I started a daily sketching habit thanks to a Nature Journaling clinic I attended where the teacher, Carole Pivarnik, mentioned in passing that she dedicated a full year to daily sketching. It took me a while, but I finally stole her idea in November 2017 and I'm looking forward to turning my AT finale into a nomadic artist's residency when I get back on the trail in June.

I found my tribe, and they all helped me continue to say yes to my callings, including sharing about pilgrimage and intentional hiking; sketching; long distance hiking as a thing I do on a regular basis; saying no to things that no longer fit.

EXCITING NEWS!

That's why I'm beside myself this week because I just learned that I will join the cast of clinicians at this year's Trail Dames Summit!

Woo Hoo!

I'll be leading not one, but two sessions.

The first is a workshop called: Intentional Hiking: A Practical Guide to Modern Pilgrimage through Long Distance Hiking.

So, yeah...talking about my thing and sharing tips for turning your hike into a spiritual experience.

The second is a movement class called Yoga For Hikers. It's a stretching and yoga class where I share how to use the items in your pack to keep people limber and flexible for the hike....bandanna, sleeping bag in stuff sack, etc.

I'm totally stoked to be part of this life-changing gathering and in the company of some incredible, bad-ass trail women.

The Summit is July 13-15 at WNC in Cullowhee, NC. Mountains, y'all! There will be hiking and gear talk and lots of chances to learn and share.

Is it calling to you? If so, you can register here and prepare to have the apples shaken loose from your tree.

On one of the hikes from the 2016 Summit, when I was still wearing boots! The day included stripping to my undies and jumping off that rock behind me into a deep pool of cold, clear water.

If keeping a notebook forever handy to jot down the random bits of flotsam and jetsam that wash up on the shores of the right side of our brain is one ingredient of creative success, then the other is the ritualized review of those notes. The gleaning and ordering and reflections that allow new work to bubble up from the sea of parts.

I love the idea of a quick note about an event accompanied by a little drawing. No fancy sketching or artwork. An icon, really. A little cartoon to capture something of the moment.

I tried this for a while, but sadly fell out of the habit as a daily practice.

I resurrected the practice during my 2017 Appalachian Trail thru-hike. It was often all I could muster at the end of a 15-20 mile hiking day that was often filled to the brim with new experiences, strange characters, weird food and random awesomeness.

Who knew walking through the "green tunnel" could be so eventful?

What strikes me as I look back through my journals and logbooks from the trail, and those other logbooks that I started and stopped the year before my hike, is how much more the visual record stimulates my memory and stirs my imagination.

I find I want to linger over those visual records so much more than I want to bother with the written journal I kept in the early days of my hike when I was fresh and hiking fewer miles.

Then the magic keeps coming.

My logbook helps me recall even more details of each day, whether I noted it there or not.

Like making eye contact with the hawk that startled, flew and filled my field of vision as I walked.

The strange grunting/coughing noise we heard in the woods while eating Velveeta mac 'n cheese out of the cook pot after the violent lightening storm.

The 47 attempts to hang my bear bag my first night alone on the trail above the Mason-Dixon line.

The great scrapple debate of 2017 held in the Fireman's Social Club in Port Clinton, PA, where the welcomed us in and bought us a drink and schooled us on the merits of head cheese.

My logbook inspires me to reconnect with the people who appear in its pages and reach out where I might have held back in the past. Who knew a journal could foster human connections as well as creative connections?

My logbook forces me to get out of my comfort zone, to get out there a do stuff...because who wants to look back at a logbook that logs the same ole shit day after day?

If I were trapped in one place, though, I could challenge myself to see something different each day and use my logbook to expand the ways I experience the world.

My logbook encourages me to keep going and to honor that everyday flotsam and jetsam that doesn't look like much as it happens, but that ultimately adds up to a well-lived life in the end.

Writers are the custodians of memory, and that’s what you must become if you want to leave some kind of record of your life…

— William Zinsser, How to Write a Memoir

Pay close attention.

Carry a notebook everywhere. Capture what strikes you as interesting in words or images.

Transfer those random interesting bits and bobs to your container, a logbook or index cards, where thoughts marinate and emerge reformed as new ideas, knowledge.

But how does the magic happen? How do we make the new connections that turn bits of information into knowledge or bobs of inspiration into art?

I mean, the stew doesn't stir itself.

Stir the pot by taking a long walk, preferably in nature--woods, beach, exposed ridge, your choice.

But if woods and beaches aren't available, that's okay if it's creative thinking you seek. A city walk will do the trick of fanning that creative flame, connecting those random ideas into something new.

What's not optional is the walking.

Nor, it seems, is the act of actually moving through space.

In other words, efficiency in the form of a treadmill won't stir the stew.

The magic is in the rhythmic movement, according to those Stanford researchers.

I've always known that walking works for my own creative impulses. (Glad to be backed up by science, now.)

What I've also known to be true (not yet studied, just another hunch on my part) is that we have the power to direct that creativity. To give it a job to do, whether it's to solve a problem, dream up an idea for a podcast, let a structure emerge for a new book or see a composition for a painting.

Those who are certain of the outcome can afford to wait and wait without anxiety.

— A Course in Miracles

There is a point in the classic telling of the Hero's Journey, (we can call it the Heroine's Journey), where the heroine crosses the threshold into the unknown, the place of mystery. She may have chosen to cross over into the mystery. Or she may have been pushed.

Either way, each day brings something new and she has no idea where her journey will take her.

She has no idea how long it will take. No idea how long she must reside in the not-knowing.

She has no idea what adventures await, though she's right to suspect there will be some things that will test her mettle and her resolve to continue. Annoying people. Cliff scrambles. Lightening. Tiny monsters with multiple legs, sometimes hairy.

The heroine has one choice to make on a moment by moment basis.

Choice #1:

To worry and stew and fret about being in the unknown. To submit to the anxiety that comes with not knowing, not being in control. To be overcome with questions that stick like bad John Denver songs in the mind and risk crowding out the small voice that, given time and space and wonder, eventually brings the answers.

"When will this be over? Where am I going? What's my purpose? What's the point? When will this change, work out, shift? WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO BE DOING WITH MY LIFE?"

Or Choice #2:

To accept and feel what bubbles up from within--fear, anxiety, boredom, self-judgment, elation; then to keep putting one foot in front of the other and stay present to the moment by moment wonders that are unfolding.

To be okay with slowing down, observing what's there, getting quiet and accepting where we are.

To be okay with not always knowing, with not being in control, with not being sure.

And to trust our inner compass enough to know we will get there even when we're not sure where "there" is.

Let’s update this list regularly. Together. (I already have a few more to add!)

What books have you read that would help us understand better what it means to be an intentional hiker, a wanderer, a fellow flaneur who is dedicated to the practice of walking in order to “discover and participate in that which is most sacred in life?”

Add that book to the comments, and I’ll add it to the list.

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